Brand identity · Packaging · Art direction · Web design · Merch & apparel · UX activation

overview

Vodka is almost never sipped… it's poured, mixed, and thrown back. Deadly Vodka leans into that reality completely, positioning itself as the catalyst for a night you'll barely remember and branding every bottle around the sin that follows.

The visual identity draws from Dante Alighieri's Inferno and the seven deadly sins — each flavor mapped to one of the circles, with its own personality, number rationale, and packaging treatment. The brand's slogan, "It is pleasure, and not necessity, that compels us," is a line lifted from the text and sharpened into a mission statement.

The hellish hurricane, which never rests, drives on the spirits with its violence.

—Dante Alighieri, Inferno

the challenge

Deadly Vodka needs to stand out in a crowded spirits market without playing the craft or premium card, because that's not who this brand is. The challenge was to create a visual identity and digital experience that felt genuinely deviant: something that attracted the crowd who drinks with intention to have a wildly good time, and repelled everyone else.

The activation goal of driving engagement via #deadlydares on the landing page was designed to solve a specific problem: getting users to stay longer and come back. Dare-based participation naturally increases time-on-site and creates social sharing momentum that a standard product page can't.

DEMOGRAPHICS RESEARCH

I conducted surveys to define the target audience. The core demographic: adults aged 21–44 with moderate disposable income who prioritize experience over refinement when they drink. Deadly Vodka isn't chasing the craft cocktail crowd, but rather speaking to the people who show up to the pregame, not the tasting.

The survey results confirmed the instinct: 91% of respondents said they never sip vodka slowly. 67% prefer it mixed; 24% take it as a shot. Nobody is savoring this spirit, and the brand should celebrate that.

I surveyed 30+ vodka drinkers across age groups via structured interviews and online questionnaires.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever had vodka without cranberry juice or soda.”

“I only drink vodka if I’m trying to get drunk.”

“Vodka usually tastes like nail polish remover.”

These insights shaped three non-negotiable brand principles:

• The brand is the catalyst for chaos, not connoisseurship, so the packaging and voice should feel like a dare, not an invitation
  • Flavored variety is central to the product line; each flavor needed its own distinct identity within a cohesive system
  • The digital experience needed to match the brand's energy, not just display it

persona

From the research, I built a primary user persona to guide design decisions across packaging, web, and activation.

flavors

Each of the seven flavors maps to one of Dante's circles of hell — with a name, a corresponding deadly sin, a flavor profile chosen to match that sin's character, and a number chosen for how it looks or feels. The system needed to work both as individual bottles and as a complete set.

COLOR PALETTE & TYpography

imagery

Photography is treated with a neon overlay. Bar and nightlife imagery run through screen blend mode to pull the packaging's electric color palette into the digital environment. The website also incorporates torn-page textures and worn paper, which echo the literary source material: Dante's Inferno rendered as something you might find in a very fun dive bar.

The merchandise extends the literary conceit off the bottle and onto the body. T-shirts and drinkware carry altered lines from Inferno. The shirt quote that was originally "Our powers, whether of mind or tongue, cannot embrace that measure of understanding" is reworked into something that reads like a dare rather than a meditation.

merchandise

Merchandise incorporates altered lines from Inferno. The personality of the brand becomes more delicious from these unexpected twists.

The quote placed on the shirt originally read, "Our powers, whether of mind or tongue, cannot embrace that measure of understanding," and the flask, “It is necessity, and not pleasure, that compels us."

With the identity system established, I moved into shaping the digital experience.

DESKTOP PROTOTYPE

Activation

The #deadlydares activation lives on the landing page and serves three goals: increasing time-on-site, building brand awareness through social sharing, and giving users a reason to come back. The mechanic is simple — users receive a dare, complete it, and can track their stats. New dares rotate in continuously, so there's always a reason to return. The format is a natural fit for a brand built around provocation: a dare is exactly what Deadly Vodka would ask of you.

main site design

The homepage leads with the product line in full neon, using scroll to reveal each sin. Navigation is minimal so the packaging is the hero.

shopping site

recipe site

initial sketches and wireframes

The concept started with rough sketches exploring how to translate Inferno's visual language — fire, darkness, manuscript textures — into a digital brand. Wireframes focused on establishing the hierarchy between the sin identity system and the product itself.

reflection

Success metrics for this project center on two signals: referral traffic driven by the #deadlydares activation, and average time-on-site. A post-launch brand awareness survey would benchmark whether the identity achieved the target 20% awareness lift among the core demographic.

Looking back, the strongest design decision was building the flavor system as a complete conceptual framework first — every packaging, copy, and UX choice flowed from the sin-to-number-to-flavor logic. If I were to revisit this, I'd push the mobile experience further and explore how the activation might live on social platforms natively, rather than requiring users to come to the site.